


clothes make the woman

by gisho



Series: After A Fashion [2]
Category: Girl Genius
Genre: Bad Decisions, Canon-Typical Violence, Ficlet, Pre-Canon, bickering not-siblings, nasty breakups
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2018-10-07
Packaged: 2019-07-27 13:07:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16219670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gisho/pseuds/gisho
Summary: Wherin Violetta gets a delivery of clothes she'd rather not wear.(Note: significantly less funny than the rest of the series.)





	clothes make the woman

\--

The parcel is sitting outside her bedroom door when Violetta finally stumbles back to it, blinking the black fuzz from the corners of her eyes. She feels bad leaving Tarvek again, he's too deep in a fugue to have a reaction time right now, on top of his usual clumsiness, but she's been running on catnaps ever since he found that stupid clank at the travelling show. Veilchen is closer to normal than she is, still-healing broken bones or not. He'll have to do. If Violetta doesn't make it to bed soon she'll pass out on the floor.

And now there's this thing. She touches it with the tip of her little finger - no poison, no explosives, not that anyone would probably bother murdering her, if she died Tarvek would just get a _better_ smoke knight. She thumps the doorframe to unset her trap, and fumbles the lock open gracelessly. He'd probably like that, too. The parcel goes sailing across the floor and slams into a bed leg, and her boots follow in short order. No hidden explosives, or the kick would have set them off, and anyone delicate release-on-open mechanisms will be bent up and useless now.

Violetta turns up the gaslight before she sits down on the bed to open it up. _Fiona's Fine Fashions of Balan's Gap_ , the label claims, and the name over the address is Violetta Mondarev. Which is absurd. One, she wears Smoke Knight clothes, because pretty dresses are for people who don't have to lurk in dusty corners, and two, because Tarvek went /into a rant once about how Fiona'a Fine Fashions should _not_ be considered ready-to-wear because they didn't actually _fit anyone_ , if they aren't prepared to _make alterations_ they should at least stick to loose cuts. The rant had been inspired by the Selnikovs' new housemaid. He finished it by earnestly promising to pay for tailoring, if Violetta needed it, rather than endure seeing her in ill-fitting clothes. It's sad Tarvek is enough of a fop to care, but Violetta would be a fool not to take advantage. This must be some kind of mix-up.

It's some kind of day dress, in that shade of off-blue that makes Violetta look like she has a wasting disease and with lace trim not sewn on straight. Under it are something in salmon with too many buttons, something brown and completely plain, and a deep blue ladies' redingote with one of those rib-high waists that make everyone look pregnant. 

She blinks at the clothes for a while in hopes an answer will float up through the fog of exhaustion, but nothing doing. The blinking is only reminding her how nice it feels to close her eyes. Violetta chucks them all onto the floor and decides to worry about it in the morning.

\--

She can hear the Prince inside the lab, making some kind of tearful speech to Anevka. Tarvek, beside her, is clenching his fists, quietly seething. She'll give the idiot this much, he's good at acting cheerful. Violetta doesn't remember ever seeing him so close to screaming and throwing things.

Distraction. Right. "So when are we going back to Paris?" 

Tarvek doesn't look at her. He's staring at his own shoes, eyes hidden behind his stupid overgrown hair. "We're not."

"What?"

"I repeat: we are not going back to Paris." He pronounces each word at a time, dropping them fastidiously into place like a chocolatier leaving nonpareils on a torte. Still not as good as chocolate-covered mimmoths, though. Tarvek adds, in a little more natural tone, "I have to stay with Anevka. Maintenance."

And it was hard enough convincing the Chief Dictator in there to send one of his children away, let alone two, or Tarvek just take Anevka home with them. For once Violetta almost feels sorry for the idiot, except that means she'll have to stay in Sturmhalten with him. She finds herself shivering pre-emptively. "So we're just going to spend the next however many years freezing up here?"

It only takes a blink before Tarvek's face twists into sheer fury. Violetta is pretty sure he'd be throwing things if there were anything to throw out here. For a terrified heartbeat she thinks he's going to throw _her_ , never mind that she could dodge. But all that happens is that he says, in a low hiss, " _I_ am going to spend however many years freezing up here. I'll have to give up on university. All my friends will probably forget I exist. I'll have to spend every day flattering my father in between bouts of doing his _job_ for him because he's too busy in the lab."

"You-"

"But at least I'll have someone _competent_ watching my back. _You_ are going away."

"What?" Her voice comes out a squeak, and she has a knife out that she doesn't remember drawing.

Tarvek looks down and sighs, and just like that all the anger is gone from his voice. "You're being transferred to Mechanicsburg," he tells her, calm and flat. "Did you get the delivery?"

It takes a few seconds for her to remember the inexplicable dresses, shoved under her bed and left to the dust bunnies in the rush of the past few days. "The one from Fiona's?" He doesn't snap back that she's being as idiotic as usual. "With the unfashionable clothes? Was that from you?"

"They're the sort of clothes," Tarvek informs her, voice still flat and dead, "that a young lady of respectable family and little means would resort to. Modest but with decorative elements, just in time for last season's fashions. Off-the-rack so they don't really fit anyone. A nice young lady, like the one who's just taken a job in the Burghermeister's office."

They already have a spy in Mechanicsburg. Katrona's been an orderly at the Great Hospital for a year. Violetta clenches her fists. "And in colours that don't suit my complexion. Because no nice young lady would want to look pretty even in cheap dresses."

"Please." He's sneering. "Like you could tell burgundy from vermillion without me coaching you."

"Well, how _nice_ of you to take time out of your busy day to order _ugly clothes_ for me!" She slams her fist toward his shoulder, and his hamfisted attempt at dodging puts him right in the way of her other fist where it will leave him with a nice big black eye. Or probably more like chartreuse. He bruises easy. "I'm only a fully trained Smoke Knight," even if she hasn't had her final exams yet, "I couldn't possibly be trusted to come up with my own disguises!"

Tarvek has given up on dodging and is trying to shield his face with his arms. "Violetta -"

"You _stuck-up fashionista!_ " She doesn't actually want to give him brain damage, for all that it would probably improve his personality; she settles for raining blows at his unprotected stomach. One nice thing about being short, it's easy to slip under someone's guard. 

Only when she stops does her cousin lower his arms, glaring at her over the tops of his glasses. Sometimes she thinks Tarvek let Anevka do whatever it was she did to cure his nearsightedness just so he could look at look supercilious at people over pince-nez. "Maniac," he throws back. "What are you, three years old?"

"Well, apparently I'm not old enough to pick out my own clothes."

"So you'll look like you're trying to look older, and everyone will throw you in the _useless_ box and forget you." Tarvek adjusts his glasses. All the better to look down on her with. "I, meanwhile, will have a Smoke Knight who doesn't make quite so much noise. Veilchen can do a better job than you with one arm, you know."

It's true, and Violetta hates that it's true for all Veichen has eight more years of practice. If she tries to say anything she's going to burst into tears.

The lab door swings open, and the Prince's head emerges, adorned with a delighted smile that falls away at the sight of the two of them throwing scorching glances across the hall. "Is something the matter, boy?"

"Nothing at all," Tarvek informs him. "Violetta doesn't like her new assignment, is all. I think she'd better leave right away."

The prince frowns. "But her replacement won't -"

"Veilchen can watch us both," Tarvek smoothly interrupts. "I won't be leaving Anevka's side for a week or two. There are too many adjustments to be made. You know how these complicated projects go."

"All too well," the prince sighs.

"The pneumatic tubing alone takes three hundred twelve connectors."

And that's that, they're off on some Sparky ramble together and they've forgotten she's there. Of course. That's the point of Smoke Knights, to be invisible.

\--

She's only three paychecks in when the other secretary suggests she get something really nice for the cheese festival, and when Violetta tries to demur and bites her lip and worries aloud about the expense - she does have to live on those paychecks, for verisimilitude, even if she can shoplift for poisons - suggests a tailor who works on credit.

Violetta pulls her new outfits from their parcel with considerable satisfaction. A cream-coloured gown, with short sleeves and a square neckline, the better to show off her figure; two blouses with lacy trim exactly where it should be; a matching skirt and waistcoat in deep brown almost red enough to be burgundy. Tarvek said once that would be a good colour for her, and it's not the sort of thing he would lie about. 

Which reminds her.

There's a portrait of her cousin tucked in the hidden lining of her suitcase. Not the kind of thing she can show people. Violetta leans it against the wall while she takes out the three ugly dresses and contemplates them. The salmon one, she decides, goes worst with his hair.

It's only a few seconds of work to rip off the sleeves with her hand dagger. It takes a little longer to get rid of the hem. But these were cheap dresses; the miracle is that she hasn't already caught it on a nail and ripped it in half. Taking the skirt to shreds is easy and satisfying. She glares at her cousin's portrait while she does it.

There are scraps enough to fill the sleeve nicely; Violetta knots the ends shut, props up the lumpy, misshapen result against her headboard, props the portrait against it, and flips up to hang from the rafter by her ankles. It's an awkward position and she has to slam her knees together to keep the nice new cream dress out of her eyes. Violetta is not a very good Smoke Knight.

But she's good enough to get all three darts through her cousin's face and stuck in the impromptu target in three twitches of her hand.

Maybe her sword liegelord doesn't want her. Maybe she had to leave her gamba in Paris and she'll never see it again and she certainly won't be able to actually start university. Maybe she's stuck in this stupid little tourist town with only that idiot at the hospital to talk shop with. She still has a job to do. She might as well keep in practice.

\--


End file.
